employees

In the biggest class-action suit for wage theft against Chipotle so far, more than 9,961 current and former workers are suing the company. The suit claims that Chipotle allegedly made employees work extra hours "off the clock" without paying them, in a practice known as wage theft.

Actual Chipotle Customer

Chipotle blames "rogue managers" for not correctly following policy, but we just hope they give their workers their fare cash due.

Nikkei's report alleges that the culture at the corporation's video game division, famous for its console games, worsened in around 2010 when a mobile title called Dragon Collection became a smash hit. As a social game for phones, development costs were low and profit returns were huge. Not long after, the report says, Konami's corporate bosses shifted the company's focus away from traditional, hardcore games and towards cheaper, and potentially more lucrative social titles.

The allegations from the report cover some of the following crazy details:

The studio behind the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V use computers allegedly not connected to the internet and are only able to send internal messages.

Employees are monitored during their lunch break with time cards and if they take too long, their names are announced to the whole company.

There are cameras in the office not for security, but rather to monitor the movements of the company's employees.

Most Konami employees don't have their own permanent company email addresses, instead are given a randomized one that changes every few months.

If game developers aren't thought to be useful at that time, they are reassigned to jobs as security guards, cleaners or in pachinko machine factories.

The report describes one former employee who announced leaving the company on Facebook and then all the fellow employees who "liked" the status were reassigned into new jobs within the company.

CRAZY, right?

And it sounds like it's at least partly true from game journalists in the know.

The Nikkei report on Konami lines up very well with a lot of what I've heard from employees before. It sounds rough there.